On October 22, journalists from different media outlets in Chiapas protested outside the State Prosecutor’s Office to demand the arrest of the masterminds of the murder of Mario Gómez Sánchez, correspondent of the “Heraldo de Chiapas”, who was murdered in Yajalón on September 21. “One month after the murder, the Prosecutor’s Office has not informed us of the investigations. We do not know if the investigations [about the three detainees at that time] show that they are the ones who murdered our partner or are scapegoats”, said journalist Itzel Grajales. The journalists indicated that they will continue to mobilize until justice is done in the case.

The next day, the State Attorney General’s Office (FGE) reported that a fourth person was arrested in relation to the case: Óscar Leyver “N”, known as “El Zapatudo” who was arrested in the city of Palenque. On October 2, Juan David “N” alias “El Machaca”, alleged material perpetrator of the murder, had been arrested; to Juan Pablo “N”, who allegedly watched the journalist’s house and a minor. These three people have already been issued an indictment for the crime of qualified homicide.

In a statement released on February 14, the Human Rights Committee Digna Ochoa in Chiapas affirmed that it had received a copy of a letter addressed to the priest of Simojovel, Marcelo Perez Perez, which was signed by Dr. Juan Carlos Salinas Prieto representative of the Mexican Geological Service and of the firm Geochemistry and Drilling Company SA de CV (GYMSA). In this letter, the priest was asked to intercede with the representations of the indigenous communities “to access their private and communal territories, and where, in a period of time of three months, he “has programmed to carry out geological mapping of the region comprised of the municipalities of Jitotol de Zaragoza, Pueblo Nuevo Solistahuacán, Bochil, San Andrés Duraznal, El Bosque, Simojovel, Huitipán, Tapilula, Rayon, Pantepec, Allende Esquipulas, Las Maravillas, Union Zaragoza, Carmen Zacatal,Álvaro Obregón, Rincon Chamula, Competition, El Bosque, Sabanilla, Tila, Tumbalá, Yajalón, Sitalá, San Juan Cancuc, Pantelhó and Chalchihuitán”.

The Committee Digna Ochoa expressed that it “confirms that the government of Chiapas and mining companies are going for more territories and municipalities in the Northern region and Highlands of Chiapas and that the threat of looting and plunder is at the door of peasants and indigenous territories’ lands. (…) A door is opened to legalize the dispossession of land and resources belonging to hundreds of communities and indigenous and peasants peoples without an effective tool of legal defense such as the community consultation supported by ILO Convention 169”.

On February 11, the Believing People of the parish of Santa Catarina Pantelho organized a demonstration in the county seat of this municipality to announce its total rejection of the company GYMSA arrival.

In the last three governments in Chiapas, 144 mining concessions for exploration or exploitation have been granted (some of them for up to 50 years). Recently, in the natural reserve “El Triunfo”, municipality, and after months of opposition, the landowners gave up some plots to a Chinese company it is said for three million pesos per hectare.

The ejidatari@s of Tila, adherents to the Sixth Declaration of the Lacandona Jungle, denounced that on 31 August a meeting was held between former ejidal commissioners and a group of approximately 150 others, toward the end of deposing the present ejidal commissioner.

In a communique, the ejidatari@s indicated that the reason for the deposition of the commissioner has to do with the organizers’ position of “not accepting dialogue or coordinating with the City Hall, and renouncing struggle for the land.” They declared that one of the former commissioners reported “that at the meeting three talks have been had with the agrarian procurator based in Palenque,” and that “they made a deal with the [Tila] City Hall so that when we definitively win our case against City Hall for the land, they would receive money in exchange for land, but they do not realize that the assembly has already rejected the government’s plans to offer 40 million pesos [in exchange for settling the court case].”

The ejidatari@s continued: “We publicly denounce the agrarian ministry based in Palenque, Chiapas, and the Subsecretary of Governance in the city of Yajalon who are coordinating with these troublemakers, with the participation of the Tila City Hall, which always hides behind these people and cheers them on. These groups are mafiosos; with them, the governmental structures works to destabilize the social peace.” Furthermore, the ejidatari@s recalled that in the Tila ejido “there exists no legal fund and the municipality has no authority over our lands. The presidency is illegal within the ejido, and only the forms of organization of ejidatarios based on uses and customs should prevail, as supported by the ILO’s Convention 169.”

On 5 February, in observance of the 96th anniversary of the Mexican Constitution, approximately 450 Ch’ol women and men who pertain to the organization Laklumal Ixim (Our People of Maize) initiated a highway blockade on the Yajalón-Tila route so as to demonstrate that nearly two months into the administration of the new state government, “the communities and peoples continue to experience abandonment, misery, and looting.” In the communique participants denounce that “the ‘National Crusade against hunger’ is a farce that seeks merely to share crumbs to our communities that experience poverty, while our natural resources are handed over to foreign firms for exploitation. This is all a part of a strategy of counter-insurgency.” Furthermore, the members of the organization demand “that the Chiapas state-government cease this strategy of looting and abandonment toward the indigenous and campesino communities of the state, and that they instead attend to our demands and needs: a just price for electricity in accordance with the poverty of our people, quality healthcare and education, dignified infrastructure (homes, works, and roads), support for coffee-growers, projects and programs of support for the countryside to help women and men of indigenous communities, respect for our rights–ejidal, communal, and indigenous–cessation of the strategy of division and confrontation among communities as promoted by the FANAR (previously PROCEDE) that is being promoted above all by the agrarian governmental agency.”